Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird by Dorothy (as Dorothy Halliday Dunnett Page B

doing that bit, without benefit of Dahlia.
    Johnson was climbing the stairs which curled left around the torn wire mesh of the lift shaft. The steps came in groups of five, joined by a short two-pace landing. At every landing the white outer wall of the staircase stopped, and there was a gap, filled by shoulder-high railings. Beyond those railings was the outer shell of the tower, lit by arrow-slit windows, and between that outer shell and the gap at each landing was nothing but space — a sheer drop from top to bottom of the tower.
    The waiter knew that Trotter had gone to the top of the tower. He thought that I had left to summon the police. All he had to do, therefore, was to waylay Johnson as he crept up those stairs, flashlight and pistol in hand, and shoot his way downstairs to freedom.
    He could ambush Johnson from the torn wire of the lift shaft, once the lift had risen up to the top. Or he could move to the outside of the stairs, swing himself over the railings and crouch there… on what? I seemed to remember there would be no trouble there. Painters’ planks had been lying for weeks between the outer windows and the staircase railings at various levels. I wished I had pointed this out to Johnson Johnson.
    Then I saw how Johnson was climbing the stairs — silently, flattened against the outer wall of the staircase. And as he came to each gap he stopped and listened, and slid across it with the nasty ease of an embolism. The whine of the lift stopped and, distantly, we could hear the doors rattle open above: Trotter was rightly taking his time to emerge. Then Johnson put out the light.
    Silence. I corrected a full facial palsy and gripped a spanner I had found by the lift. It was difficult to know how I, B. Douglas MacRannoch, found myself here in the Bahamas, closeted in a water tower with an army sergeant, a would-be murderer, and an espionage agent. I broadened my diagnostic classification: with possibly two would-be murderers. That is, in the darkness, the waiter who had tried to kill Johnson might succeed in slipping past him unnoticed, and I might find myself grappling with him downstairs at the door.
    On the other hand, Sergeant Trotter had certainly helped us pursue the man out of the club. But he was also, with Brady and Krishtof, one of our earliest suspects from Edgecombe’s collapse. He had yet to prove himself innocent. And he had knocked the gun out of Johnson’s hand back at the Staircase. If Trotter were on the wrong side, all he had to do was pin Johnson down for the waiter to shoot. And then let the waiter escape.
    There seemed one obvious way out of the dilemma. I banged the door again and called, “I’ve got the police, Mr. Johnson. We’re just coming up,” and ran across to the stairs. Above, a gun fired, and I could hear the bullet ricocheting; it was followed by another shot and a burst of running footsteps. Johnson’s voice said, “Trotter! He’s coming up!” He added authoritatively, “Doctor MacRannoch, stay down below and tell them to cordon the tower.”
    It was a fairly weak bluff, since anyone in their senses would have noticed the absence of car wheels and voices and general noise, but it was possible, I supposed, that a man in a panic might act on it. At any rate, I disobeyed orders and ran up the stairs, while Johnson and the waiter pounded ahead of me. There was another shot, and you could hear from the flat sound that it had been fired in the open. Then, as I raced up the last of the stairs and burst into the lift room, I heard Trotter speak. “Careful. He’s above, on the struts.” I crept up the steps and into the open walk which ran around the roof of the tower.
    Beyond the retaining wall just beside me was the mounted telescope through which one could see the whole panoramic view of the town of Nassau: big blocks set among the green of firs and coconut palms, with the intersecting pink and white arms of the United Commonwealth there just below us. And in the